


And It Carries On

by BrownieFox



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Ending, M/M, Post-Canon, also AU, not 15x20 compliant, outsider pov, set a nebulous amount of time in the future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:07:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28902390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrownieFox/pseuds/BrownieFox
Summary: A pair of Hunters, new to the life, find help in the form of a strange man.An alternate ending to Supernatural, how I would've written it.
Relationships: Castiel & Sam Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 3
Kudos: 62





	And It Carries On

Audrey knows they’re screwed when the widow asks for a phone number.

Listen, as rude as it sounds, the last five widows/widowers/mourning kids that Audrey and Gus have interviewed had all been too distressed or sad or depressed to notice anything weird about a couple of early-twenty somethings claiming they’re with the FBI. FBI was, actually, not what Gus considers to be a great cover - which he has stated over and over again - but the fake IDs had cost them an arm and a leg. Maybe they’d add to their ‘collection’ at some point, but at the moment it’s just the one pair.

“Ah, well,” Audrey starts, aware she’s about to dig them into a hole they probably won’t be able to get out of.

“Sorry, ma’am, they’re with me.” 

The man pushes right between Audrey and Gus, putting his hand out to the widow for a shake, and shooting both of them an annoyed look. 

“And you are?” The widow raises and unimpressed eyebrow.

“Agent Jovi.” The man’s hand, which never got the shake it had been waiting for, retreated into his tan trenchcoat and pulled out his own badge that he flipped open and let the widow inspect before easily putting back into whatever pocket he kept it in, the entire move having a certain degree of ease that came only with having done it a hundred times before. 

“Well as I was just telling these two, I would like a way to contact your superiors about this.” The widow folds her arms in front of her, clearly preparing for the same bumbling excuse that Audrey had been seconds away from giving.

Instead, however, the man reaches into his coat once more and this time, what he pulls out is a sleek and thick piece of paper. It, well, it looks like a business card. Did the FBI usually have business cards? Not that Audrey thinks the guy is really FBI - the real FBI probably wouldn’t be interested in the circumstances of the window’s husband’s death or cover for a pair of fake FBI agents found on the scene - but business cards had been something neither Audrey nor Gus had ever considered to sell the charade. 

The widow takes it, looks it over, looks back at ‘Agent Jovi’, and with a sigh lets the three of them into the house.

‘Agent Jovi’ takes over the interview from there, saying something as they get situated in the living room about Audrey and Gus being junior agents he’s supposed to be training who got it into their heads to try and take on the on their own. The widow takes the story at face value, and Audrey and Gus take their cue to look like they’ve been chastised. 

While ‘Agent Jovi’ asks questions, Audrey does her best to subtly size the man up. Both Gus and ‘Agent Jovi’ have the note-taking down anyway. Audrey was going to be the one asking questions, so now she’s out of a role. 

‘Agent Jovi’ could be anywhere from late twenties to his early fifties as far as Audrey can tell, but it doesn’t help that she’s always been bad at estimating ages. He wore a suit and a nice blue tie, as well as the aforementioned tan trenchcoat. His hair was black, his eyes sharp blue that looked like they could be glowing. If the man has any weapons on him, it’s completely impossible to tell with his trenchcoat, and Audrey wonders if that isn’t the exact reason behind it. 

When it’s all said and done, the three of them standing out on the front lawn, ‘Agent Jovi’ turns to them.

“It sounds like a ghost.” He says.

“Who the hell are you?” Gus demands, stepping in front of Audrey. Audrey rolls her eyes at that, but she lets her brother get all protective for a second. The man tilts his head to the side, eyes almost impossibly more blue than earlier, as he regards them. 

“You can call me Cas,” He finally says, and then, after a beat, “You two are new to this.” It’s not so much a question as it sounds like Cas stating a conclusion he’d already come to. 

“We know enough.” Gus bullshits. Cas raises his eyebrows.

“No you don’t.” He replies without hesitation.

“So you hunt.” Audrey asks. They’ve only run into two other Hunters - the first being the one who’d introduced them to Hunting, to trying to find a way to stop the curse that plagued their families.

“I have been hunting-adjacent for some time now.” Cas says, which sounds sketchy as hell. 

“‘Hunting-adjacent’.” Gus repeats. “What the hell is that supposed to mean.” 

“It means I know more about hunting than either of you. I was planning just to pass through.” He stops talking and waits expectantly. 

“But?” Audrey leads.

“But,” Cas concedes, “I think I’ll stay and help you both with this case.” 

“We can take care of a ghost fine!” Gus insists.

“Do you know the mortality rate among new Hunters?” Cas asks. He clearly takes their silence as answer enough and goes on, “Of course, there’s no official way to track that sort of thing, but from my own experience I’d say it’s around 80% fatality within the first year or so. Most of the public is still unaware, but new Hunters have been on the rise. I think you’d find that it’s in both of our best interests if I assist you on this one.” 

oOo

Cas is an odd man. A smart one, to be sure, easily leading Audrey and Gus through the investigation until they find the person and graveyard they’re planning to salt and burn. Cas says the phrase as one thing ‘salt-and-burn’, like each word was inseparable from the rest. 

“It looks like a simple salt-and-burn, but you always need to be ready for something to go wrong.” He tells them as they leave the hotel room Audrey and Gus had gotten for the duration of their stay in town, the time for which had gone down considerably considering how quickly Cas had worked through their case. He leads them to the black car he’d driven them there in. Neither Audrey nor Gus know anything about cars, but she can still tell it’s a nice car. 

The trunk, however, contains a verifiable armory, which interests Audrey far more than whatever its make and model is.

Audrey and Gus both already have weapons to deal with ghosts - Audrey with a sawed-off shotgun and Gus with an iron fire-poker they found at a second-hand store - but Cas offers her some salt rounds and has an extra shovel so two of them can dig at the same time while the third stands watch. 

The siblings know how to deal with ghosts and were told about some basic protections and precautions against demons. The items in the trunk speak of hundreds of different ways to kill hundreds of different things. ‘Hunting adjacent’ apparently means becoming a walking (or rather driving) encyclopedia of monster-killing. 

“Borax?” Audrey questions, seeing a decent-sized box looking out of place amongst the guns and knives.

“For leviathans, although I haven’t run into any in some time now.” Castiel says like it explained everything, and maybe for another well-established Hunter it would’ve been enough. As it was, Audrey and Gus let it go without questioning exactly what it meant. 

The digging took a while, although it went by leagues faster than the past couple Audrey and Gus had done all on their own. Debbie - the ghost - did make the token effort to try and stop them once they hit the coffin. Cas had that handled, jumping out of the six-foot hole and swiping at the ghost with the shovel itself. Huh, iron shovel, two in one. 

Gus and Audrey climb out as well. They’d traded off shifts of digging, but Cas’ stamina didn’t seem to wane at all. 

It was all said and done so quickly that there was still enough time to hit a bar. They payed for Cas’ beer and sat down together. Gus’ suspicion is by now mostly gone and he offers the strange Hunter a grin. 

“So,” Cas asks, sipping his beer with little interest and leveling that intense and curious look at the both of them, “What made the two of you into Hunters?”

Gus takes this one, talking about a hundred-year curse and how it took their mother from them, and how their father had died trying to break it and, well, either they try to break the curse and die trying or die young anyway  _ because  _ of the curse. Cas seems to accept that as a good enough reason, nodding a slow and careful nod.

“You’re young and new to this. It’s a hard life, and maybe not a good one.” He says, like it’s news, like it’s something that Gus and Audrey hadn’t known when they’d purposefully seeked out the Hunter at the bar, begging him for tips and answers and a bare hope that something can be done about them, about their situation.

“But it’s the one we have.” Audrey says. He regards them again, and when he lowers the beer bottle there’s a small smile as he says,

“I suppose it is, isn’t it.”

They talk for a while, mostly a Q&A of Audrey and Gus asking about monsters and Cas giving them explanations. Just as his car implied, he was a verifiable dictionary on the supernatural. Audrey couldn’t fathom ever being able to recall so much information about killing things right off the top of her head. How did Cas remember that inorder to kill something-or-other, you needed the bone of a priest soaked in the blood of a goat on a full moon and then for seven more days? 

(Cas had amended that one with, after a moments pause, that a wood chippers would work just as well. In fact, for many things, wood chippers would do just fine if you could manage it.)

He gets up before either Audrey or Gus are done with their own drinks. 

“I promised I would be home by tomorrow night, and I still have a long ways to drive.” He explains. 

“This late at night?” Gus says, and Audrey can’t help but to smirk at the clear fondness for the odd man that Gus has clearly already developed 

“I will be fine.” Cas assures them and then reaches into his trenchcoat. He pulls out another business card, and for a moment Audrey thinks its the same one he gave the widow. Further inspection proves it not to be the case. It says nothing about ‘FBI’ or ‘Police’ or anything he may be pretending to be. Instead, one side has a phone number, and the other side has two rifles crossover each other. It’s simple, almost plain, and Audrey holds it like the lifeline she somehow knows it must be, “If you need anything at all, don’t be afraid to call.” 

And the strange man disappears into the night.

oOo

Dean doesn’t know the ‘Agents Jackson and Chase’ the lady on the other side of the phone asks about, but he recognizes ‘Agent Jovi’ and falls immediately into his strict FBI voice; a but rougher and grittier than his usual, commanding a ‘too old for this shit’ kind of demeanor that has become less and less of an act over time. He manages to assure the women that, yes, they were FBI, and finishes it by saying that they’ll be in touch if they need her again. He knows they won’t and doesn’t even manage to write down her number. 

He shakes his head. Of course Cas wouldn’t be able to help but check out a few cases on his way back to the Bunker. He tries for frustration and only comes up with fondly unsurprised. 

It’s getting late. Dinner is almost finished, and it was bad enough having been pulled away from cooking to have take care of phones. Maybe he’d be able to convince Sam to devote one of ‘his kids’ to do it. Not all the time, Dean rather likes doing phones, but sometimes it could be almost more of a pain than it felt like it was worth. 

He doesn’t hear the impala come back home, back to base, back to where it now belongs, but he does hear the dress-shows on the marble floor approaching and straightens up when Cas comes into the kitchen. 

Cas doesn’t age. He still looks the same as he ever did, black hair and blue eyes, none of the grays that pepper Sam and Dean’s. It bothered Dean, at first, but now he just loves that some things never will change, and he finds he’s glad to know that somebody will be around when he and Sam aren’t anymore. 

“Came close there.” Dean teases and Cas rolls his eyes. 

“As if you’ve never come back late before.” Cas points out. He’s now close enough for Dean to smack the back of his head for the comment and then tangle his hand up in the hair, pulling Cas in for a kiss. It’s a kind of routine now, a welcome home, a balance returned now that he was back. 

In a reality, if Cas really wanted, he could’ve flown across the country for the hunt and flown home, but it felt wrong, leaving the impala behind like that. 

“Help me bring dinner out and I might think about forgiving you.”

Sam and his ‘team’, his ‘kids’, all sit in the library. They’re a collection of college students who are attending college nearby and also have the unfortunate fake of being Hunters or related to Hunters. Some wanted out, some just wanted a college education to fall back on, some wanted to find some kind of balance. Sam was willing to help all of them with any of it, offering food and board for the low price of being Sam’s research assistants. Hunters would call, asking for help with something or other, and at some point it’d become too many requests for the three of them to field on their own. 

“Look who decided to show up.” Sam ribs and Cas rolls his eyes a second time but he’s smiling.

“And look who’s taken in another kid.” Cas retorts. The new kid - some girl - blushes and looks like she’s trying to hide behind a book. “We’re happy to have you here.” He quickly assures her. 

“As if you’re one to talk. It sounds like you might’ve taken in two strays of your own.” Dean says. 

“Audrey and Gus.” Cas nods, “They’re new and young.” ‘New’ and ‘Young’ were the name of the game these days. The supernatural was on the rise, and Sam had various bets going on how much longer the world’s best kept secret would actually remain secret. It was the best, really, to get the jump on them when they could and get them the right information, raise them with the right sort of knowledge and the good and the bad and too much gray that exists in between.

“No Jack tonight.” Sam tells Cas and Cas sighs sadly. Nothing to be done about it. Apparently being God was a more time-consuming job than it seemed. 

The phone rings again just as they sit down and this time it’s Sam’s turn to answer as the rest of them dig in to the meal. 

Dean looks around, relishing for a moment the warmth that had entered the too cold and too empty bunker, and finds that, just maybe, he’s satisfied.

**Author's Note:**

> Ah Supernatural, what is there to say about it that hasn't been said before? It's a lot easier to say 'I hate supernatural' than it is to say 'god, I still love supernatural, it's always going to have this special place in my heart and was a huge part of my late middle school life, but I disliked how it dragged on and don't like some of the plot points that it ended up dealing with'. 
> 
> So here's this, a little love letter to the finale, to supernatural I guess. The Found Family trope, I feel, should've been more of a focal point and expanded upon. I'm hoping that this fic gives the feeling I'm trying to portray - of the world moving on, of the boys finding a balance of domesticity and hunting, of a growing world. 
> 
> also, side note, why doesn't jack get to still chill with his dads???? absolutely the worst let the baby boy stay with his parents :(


End file.
